At first glance, you'd be hard-pressed to notice the difference between LaCie's LaCinema Rugged HD and last year's model, but sure enough, the middle square of that device definitely has "HD" ingrained into its genetic code, and if you can't guess what that means, we'll tell ya: 1080p output. Other than that aesthetic modification and the new peak resolution, there's not a lot that's changed -- HDMI and composite output, USB 2.0 transfer, and a sizable number of supported codecs -- but that's not exactly a bad thing here. It's available as of this moment, and while previously we had a few variety of sizes, for now we're only seeing 500GB at a penny under $350 before shipping.

LaCie's LaCinema Black MAX is but a few months old, and already the aforesaid company is expanding the family. The newest two are the LaCinema Black PLAY and RECORD, both of which enable users to stream HD media over their network, house content internally with up to 1TB of space and connect sans wires via WiFi. As expected, there's a built-in UPnP client to suck down content from a networked PC or Mac, and it'll even handle 1080i upscaling of SD material. Oh, and if you couldn't guess, the RECORD also enables TV tuning and recording if you're into that type thing. Both can be ordered up right now starting at $429.99.

It was May of last year when LaCie last updated its external d2 Blu-ray burner, so it's about time we saw that 4x burn rate double to an entirely more palatable 8x. Available now for consumers in the US, the latest d2 Blu-ray Drive ($449.99) can toast both single- and dual-layer BD-Rs at 8x, and it can connect to one's machine via FireWire or USB 2.0. In related news, the outfit has also introduced a LaCinema Black MAX over in Europe, which acts to serve up all sorts of digital media (photos, video clips, music, etc.) on one's HDTV. You can order it with 500GB / 1TB of inbuilt storage, and the integrated Ethernet jack / WiFi module enables it to pull media (up to 1080p) from other locations on your network. We've nary a clue on pricing / availability for this one, but we'll leave it to those in Europe to hunt it down and brag to us Yanks.

Read - 8x d2 Blu-ray Drive
Read - LaCinema Black MAX [PDF; thanks Predator]

We asked, and we're receiving. LaCie's LaCinema Rugged was initially announced across the pond late last month, yet we rough Americans were left wondering if it would ever see the light of day on US soil. Just in time for the holiday rush, LaCie has indeed announced US pricing and availability for the bulked up multimedia drive, and it's not like you even have to wait around to get your mitts on one. Try right now starting at $199.99, with sizes including 250GB, 320GB and 500GB.

LaCie launched the original LaCinema media drive back in January, and the company is now extending the line of media-playback drives with the LaCinema Rugged. Built in a tasteful black version of the same rubber-coated chassis as LaCie's standard rugged drives, the new unit comes in capacities up to 500GB and features 1080i HDMI output of a variety of codecs, including XviD. The LaCinema remote appears to be redesigned, and the menu system is apparently graphical and pretty, which is always nice. Not a bad way to do playback on the go, we suppose -- now if LaCie would just bring the £219 ($357) drive to the States, we'd be all set.

[Via Pocket-lint]